Melanie Winchester
Melanie" Mel" Halliwell is the middle sister of the Charmed Ones following the death of her oldest sister, Prue and the discovery of her younger half-sister, Paige. She is the wife of a Cupid named Henry and the mother of their children, Melody, Maggie, Molly, Elizabeth Halliwell. She was once pregnant with and lost a son while she was married to her ex-husband Cole Turner. Melanie was often considered the weakest of The Charmed Ones by demons due to her primary powers being more inclined to be passive than active. However, she consistently proved them wrong with her formidable martial-arts skills and her remarkable spell-casting talent. Her Wiccan powers gradually evolved, coming to include dangerously offensive aspects that could match those of her sisters: Premonition, Levitation, Empathy, and Psychic Reflection. Besides this, Melanie possesses the basic powers of a witch: the ability to cast spells (which is her specialty), brew potions, scry for lost objects and people, and divine for pieces of information. Last but not least, Melanie could access The Power of Three, the collective power of the Charmed Ones. Melanie is a famous columnist, and occasionally a reporter at The Bay Mirror, and is the author of the best-seller "Finding Love". Early History Early life Melanie was born on November 2nd, 1995 to the Warren witch Patty Halliwell and the whitelighter Sam Wilder. On March 24th, 1995, Melanie's birth power of premonition manifested itself through her mother while still in the womb, granting Patty a vision of the future. Following this e vent, the unborn Melanie combined her magic with her two older sisters, Prue and Piper, to use the Power of Three to send their future selves back to their time. Sometime after she was born, her maternal grandmother, Penny, bound her powers and erased all her magic-related memories, along with her sisters' powers and memories, in order to keep her safe from the warlock Nicholas, who was promised their powers in a pact. Unfortunately for her, almost three years after her birth, Melanie's mother was killed by the Water Demon. As a result, Melanie never really knew her mother, and this loss ultimately had a significant impact on her and her sisters' lives to the extent that she once confessed that if she had one wish to be granted, she would ask for time alone with her mother. At the age of ten, Melanie was transported to the year 2005 by a spell cast by her future self, where she met two older versions of herself as well as those of her sisters Piper and Paige. She was taken to the Heavens by her Whitelighter, Leo, for safety. After she helped her older-self listen to her heart about marrying Cole, she returned to her own time, where Grams quickly erased her memory of the time travel. Melanie was a good student, and once earned an award for Student of the Month, but became somewhat of a juvenile delinquent in her teenage years by causing trouble around her school and even engaging in shoplifting. This change of character was often credited to the fact that Grams had tried to often control her, which led to dedicate herself to rebellion out of spite. However, Piper believed her acting out was due to her unhappiness over her lack of a true mother.She was given the nickname "Freebie" in high school after making out with her old boyfriend in the principal's office. Becoming a Charmed One Melanie returned from New York after spending six months there following the death of her Grams. On that night, while playing with the spirit board with Piper, the pointer suddenly moved on its own, spelling out the word "attic." To find out more about it, she went up to the attic where she found the Book of Shadows. Melanie then cast the Dominus Trinus, which reawakened the powers of the three sisters that were previously bound by their Grams when they were children. The next day, she received her first premonition—two teenagers getting hit by a car—which allowed her to prevent the accident, though it came at the cost of her being injured. Both Prue and Piper initially did not believe her when she told them that they were the Charmed Ones, but they were forced to acknowledge it as the truth when they each manifested their own powers. Later, all three sisters managed to tap into the Power of Three and vanquished Jeremy. Unlike her sisters, Melanie embraced her destiny as a Charmed One with open arms and convinced them to embrace their magic as well. With the help of their magical destiny, she and Prue were finally able to heal the rift that stemmed from their dramatic differences. However, as the least rule-abiding one of the four sisters, Melanie frequently saw magic as a tool, which led her to often break the most basic of Wiccan rules: magic is not meant to be used for personal gain. Her disregard for the restrictions eventually led to her active powers of levitation and empathy being stripped from her after she excessively exploited them for her own personal gain. This served as a hard yet necessary lesson, given that while it finally taught her the importance of rule-abiding, it also meant that she was forced to learn to depend more on her personal self, such her basic common sense, her natural spell-writing talent, and, of course, her academic knowledge of magic. It was an experience that she sincerely took to heart, evidenced by the fact that even after she regained all of her former powers and developed new abilities, she remained a more careful and conscientious witch, one who took great care to consider the possible consequences of using magic and to be mindful of hurting others with it. Despite anything and everything, she was consistently the most spirited and spontaneous Charmed One. Graduating from College As Melanie's personality matured and her knowledge of witchcraft became more extensive, she decided to get a job but was relatively turned off by the fact she was not educated enough to obtain jobs that interested her. This ultimately led to Melanie deciding to return to college, and she worked hard to ensure that she was able to balance her studies on top of her responsibilities as a Charmed One, which she took very seriously. However, this balancing act proved to be extremely difficult for her, as she and her sisters were subjected to frequent demonic attacks, and her instinct to protect the innocent often got in the way of her studies and nearly derailed her intent to pass all of her final exams. Fortunately, Melanie eventually overcame all obstacles and passed her exams, allowing her to later graduate from college with a B.A. in Psychology. While this achievement was a huge source of pride for her, her duties as a Charmed One ultimately prevented her from using her degree for two years after she graduated. Falling in Love with Cole Turner Melanie met Cole Turner while she was in college. He was the assistant district attorney in charge of a case in which she was involved. Unbeknownst to the sisters, Cole was a half-demon known as Belthazor who was sent by the Triad to kill the Charmed Ones. The two fell in lust and flirted with each other for several months until Cole eventually asked Melanie out on a date, which she happily accepted. However, Cole had unintentionally fallen in love with her, which prompted him to purposely fail his missions from the Triad in order to protect her. During one of his botched and half-hearted attacks on the Charmed Ones, Cole was inadvertently hurt. However, his betrayal enraged the Triad, who then tried and failed to kill him. Cole's injury eventually led to Melanie discovering of his true identity as both him and Belthazor were injured in the spot. A hurt and angry Melanie wanted to vanquish him until he finally convinced her of his love by saving her life. She then decided to fake his death to protect him from her sisters. This complicated her relationship with her sisters until the guilt she felt due to lying to them motivated her to eventually tell the truth; first to her Whitelighter, Leo, and then to her sisters, Piper and Prue. A few months later, Cole returned to San Francisco. Although Melanie was dismissive of him at first, she was eventually persuaded when he began dedicating himself to help do good deeds to prove his intentions. Cole even went so far as to agree to rid himself of his powers forever, but this act was delayed when the Brotherhood of the Thorn attempted to merge with the human society. However, she was forced to watch as a mind-controlled Cole assassinated a witch, not knowing that it was all Raynor's doing in a bid to destroy her love for Cole. Shortly after, a Banshee attacked her and she was forced to confront her root pain: Cole. He explained that it was all a misunderstanding set up by Raynor in order to turn her against him, and she decided to take him back once again. Prue's Death and Finding Paige Melanie's oldest sister, Prue Halliwell, was killed in battle by the demon Shax. The tragic and unexpected loss of their sister was devastating for both Piper and Melanie, though the former was more open than the latter regarding how badly she was shaken by it. However, Melanie tried to remain strong and collected for Piper's sake, and worked hard to make sure everything was taken care of so no one else would have to worry about it. At her sister's funeral, she met a woman named Paige Matthews, and when they shook hands, she had a premonition that Paige would be killed by Shax, the same demon who killed Prue. With Piper too overwhelmed with grief to help, she decided to team up with Cole so they could save Paige. With Cole's investigation, they found out that she was a potential Charmed One who may be able to reconstitute the Power of Three. They then interrogated Grams and Patty and found out that Paige was their younger half-sister, who was given up at birth for protection. Paige then arrived at the house and shook hands with her older half-sisters, and the Power of Three was then recreated. Melanie also played a significant role not only in helping Paige to mature into their Charmed heritage, but also to ensure that Paige and Piper came to understand and love each other as sisters. Though she was just as grieved as Piper over Prue's death, and she once confessed that she was actually frightened and doubtful of whether they could continue to fight the good fight without her, she eventually learned to move on with life. With Piper now the oldest sister and therefore the natural leader of the reconstituted Charmed Ones, Melanie took on the mantle of the mediator between Piper and Paige (whose initial relationship resembled that of the one shared between her and Prue's during their early years, though less hostile in comparison), and also focused on honing her power of levitation as well as her spell-writing talents. Becoming the Queen of the Underworld Cole Turner absorbed the powers of the Source so that the Charmed Ones could vanquish him. However, after the vanquish, the essence of the Source stayed in Cole and slowly started to corrupt him. Melanie's powers alerted her that something was wrong, especially after feeling a premonition about Cole being blocked, however she remained oblivious to the matter. Cole then tricked Melanie into marrying him through a Dark Binding ceremony. Shortly after, Melanie found out that she was pregnant. With the pregnancy, she began manifesting the ability to shoot flames from her hands and the power of teleportation. When she found out the truth through a premonition, she was in shock, however, the Seer convinced her to become the Queen of the Underworld. She then vanquished an evil Wizard who was trying to take Cole's position as the Source and joined Cole as his queen. Melanie tried to live the life of the queen of all evil, but a combination of pregnancy hormones and demonic tonics made her so cranky that she ended up vanquishing five of Cole's best demons. Because she missed her sisters, and because saving innocents was "who she was," Melanie then tried to play both sides of good and evil before realizing that she had to choose. She later discovered that Cole knew about The Seer's tonics completely eating away at her good nature. Shortly after, she found out that Cole killed one of her innocents and she chose to rejoin her sisters in opposing him. Together, they cast the spell which used the power of their ancestors to vanquish Cole. Because of Cole's death, the Source had completely taken over the unborn baby Melanie was carrying. After the child was stolen by the Seer, Melanie came to terms with the fact the evil spawn never truly belonged to her. Getting Divorced from Cole Turner Melanie was still trying to put her life back together and her time as Queen of the Underworld behind her when Cole returned from the Demonic Wasteland. Despite their unchangeable mutual love, she believed that they could not be together because he now had countless demonic powers—though he did his best to do good deeds—and she was still a good witch. Her traumatic experiences from being the Queen of the Underworld and carrying the unborn Source also played a hand in her reluctance of their relationship. Hence, Melanie decided to file for divorce. However, Cole could not accept that their marriage was over and continued to pursue her, but it only made Melanie's love for him gradually turn into hatred as he succumbed to evil once again and attempted to turn her as well. Her powers eventually became inactive due to her attempts to avoid Cole by overworking herself at the Bay Mirror. She tried to solve this problem by going to a gypsy fortuneteller. Lydia, another gypsy, told her that her powers were not working because she working too hard and was neglecting her powers. By balancing her time at work and with family, her powers become active once again and even advanced to the point that she can see the future in color and experience the event as if she had astral-projected into her future self. Cole, blaming Paige's appearance as the start of his and Melanie's problems, becomes an Avatar in order to have the power needed to change history, thus creating a new reality where Paige never reconstituted the Charmed Ones as she was killed by Shax, thus allowing demons to take over the world. In this alternate reality, Melanie is still married to Cole, but she hates him just as much as she does in the original world, only remaining married to him in order to ensure what happened to Prue doesn't happen to Piper. Living in a world with neither her sisters nor Cole's love, Melanie gratified herself through casual sex with random men and even demons. She had guarded herself against love and was not as open as she once was. During an unexpected yet honest conversation between her and Cole, she confessed that she also did not know why their love had soured into hatred, but concluded that perhaps it was because they were not meant to be together after all. Paige, however, manages to orb into this reality by accident and is able to make things right by recreating the Power of Three again. Melanie, this time, personally vanquishes her former love. Paige was then transported back to the rightful timeline where she informed Melanie and Piper of the events that occurred and of Cole's death. After the sisters confirmed that Cole was truly gone for good, Melanie once again concluded that she and Cole were just not meant to be. Melanie Becomes an Empath Melanie discovered that besides being a witch, she was also destined to be an Empath, gaining the ability to feel other people's emotions. Initially, Melanie was excited to have gained a new power but eventually grew to fear it as she recalls how it almost killed Prue. However, Leo explained that her becoming an empath may have happened a little early because she was meant to use her new power to save Piper, who became trapped in an emotional cocoon when Leo became an Elder. After saving Piper, who because of her hidden emotions had become a Valkyrie, Melanie attempted to gain control over hew new power, though it proved to be difficult especially with her and Jason Dean's growing feelings for each other. Over time, she began to find some control over her empathic abilities and with Piper's blessing, she moved to Hong Kong with Jason. Unfortunately, her relationship with him eventually came to an end when he found out about her witch heritage. Visions of Utopia In that same year, Melanie is sent on a vision quest by Enola, a young shaman at Magic School. She is taken into a possible future without the constant demon attacks where she is pregnant. This would not be the last time Melanie is given a vision of a peaceful future. However, shortly afterward, all three of Melanie's active powers were taken away by the Tribunal because she had been misusing her premonition power. Fortunately, within a few months, she regained her premonition powers and was able to form a bond with the Seer, Kyra, who offered the side of good information on the Avatars in exchange for being made human. Kyra shared with Melanie a vision of the Avatars' ultimate goal -- Utopia, a world free of the battle between good and evil. In this future, Melanie discovers that she has a daughter. Melanie was overjoyed with what she saw, however, she soon realized that the Avatars' future involved killing people who didn't fit their perfect world and convinced her sisters to stop them. This action erased the Utopian future. Over time, Melanie began to doubt whether or not she would ever have the little girl she foresaw, becoming obsessed with finding the right man who would give her this child. Subsequently, this also caused her to lose faith in her powers. Temporary Retirement and becoming Julie Bennett After Melanie and her sisters' astral selves destroyed Zankou and the Nexus in the basement of Halliwell Manor, everyone, both mortal and supernatural, believed they were dead because of the blast created by the blast. This was their chance to finally lead a normal life. The sisters decided to leave their charmed life behind and start over. That is when Melanie decided that the sisters should choose one appearance and make it a permanent one by the use of a spell. The sisters and Leo changed identities, becoming the cousins of their father Victor. Melanie's new alias was Julie Bennett and everyone else but her loved ones could only see her "new look". They soon realized, however, that hiding from their identities was a mistake, so after consulting the Department of Homeland Security, she and her sisters returned to their normal lives. Finding Her True Love Melanie moved out of the manor and got her own apartment in the city. Soon after, she met Coop, who turned out to be a Cupid that was sent by the Elders to help her find her true love. Melanie at first, disliked Coop and was annoyed and irritated that the Elders would think she needed help to find love, but Coop knew that she was just scared because of all her previous heartbreaks and disappointments and reassured her that her future daughter was destined. Over time, she grew to trust Coop and sought his advice on both magical and family matters. However, Melanie's continuing reluctance and Coop's persistence led to them challenging, amusing, and exciting each other. Over time, little by little, they began to develop feelings for each other but hid them to save themselves from the trauma Piper and Leo went through. Melanie finally told Coop that it was him she wanted and the two ignited their romance with a passionate kiss. Even though they both believed that their love was forbidden, Coop still insisted that they could have a life together and was willing to fight for them. However, while Melanie loved him she was afraid of getting hurt. Coop was hurt, but he stuck by her and continued to support her during magical affairs. Soon afterward, Melanie found out that the Elders actually sent Coop to her, in the hopes that she would fall in love with him. Delighted, Melanie and Coop were finally able to embrace the love for each other. Ultimate Battle & Victory When Melanie found out that Billie Jenkins was (part of) the "Ultimate Power," she was reluctant to vanquish her, which lead to a disagreement with Piper, until a spell was cast on her because of Billie. Left with no choice but to fight, the sisters acquired the Hollow to became strong enough to destroy Billie and Christy and the evil Triad. The powers from the Hollow, however, led to the destruction of the Manor, which killed Melanie and Paige in the explosion. Coop was devastated when he learned of Melanie's death and gave a bereaved Piper his ring so that she could travel back in time to save both her sisters. Piper and Leo then used the ring to travel back to the past and enlisted the help of Patty and Grams. Piper, Patty, Leo, and Grams then traveled to the past, arriving right on the moment that, the Charmed Ones and the Jenkins' started to battle. Piper, Patty, and Penny stopped the final battle from happening by sending the Hollow back to its resting place. Melanie and Paige are saved, alive again. Time then adjusted itself to its new future. Not long after, the Charmed Ones killed the Triad and came out victorious. Peaceful Times After the Ultimate battle, Melanie and her sisters started writing about their experiences over the last eight years in the Book of Shadows so they can pass it down the way it was passed down to them. With most of the powerful demons vanquished, Melanie and her family were free from fighting demons for one year and six months. During this time, Melanie and Coop started to date and she also continued her work at the Bay Mirror. Marrying Henry and First Child After dating for a few months, Coop took Melanie to Cupid's Temple and proposed. She accepted and was later married to her true love by an Angel of Destiny at the newly regained Magic School. While on their honeymoon, she got pregnant with their first child. Nine months later, she gave birth to their daughter, P.J. Halliwell. Sometime before or after baby Prue's birth, Melanie moved out of her condo and bought a house with Coop, which the couple and their daughter currently live in. At the end of her maternity leave, Melanie found that she did not want to return to work and leave her newborn daughter. However, after deciding that she had to, Melanie and Coop discover that little Prue has come into her powers as she kept beaming her mommy back home every time she would try to leave. Melanie's Powers Return Melanie's premonition power appears to have advanced, evident by the fact that she was able to receive one upon command while she and Piper were attending their friend Brittany's funeral. She wanted to know how Brittany died, so she impulsively touches the coffin and receives a premonition, seeing Brittany looking very old. She explains to Piper that she's as old as when Javna stole her youth nearly ten years before. Later that same day, she regained her levitation power. While looking through the Book of Shadows in the Manor, she receives a premonition so powerful that it causes her to hover in the air. As she levitates, she foresees all of the innocents that she and her sisters have saved, in grave danger. A couple of days later, she regained her gift of empathy; while at work, she was reluctant to take part in Elise's latest publicity stunt, until her empathy power kicks in and she feels the incredible love of a couple who turned out to be Romeo and Juliet. Later, when she got home, she shares the happy news that her Empathy powers are back. It is during this time that Melanie decides to write a book. Fear of Her Power & Hurting Cal After Melanie discovered that her publicist and close friend, Mika was dating Cal Greene, she became worried that the future she saw eight years earlier where she used a new power to kill Cal for murdering a close friend, would eventually come true. She did not understand her new power and was afraid that she would use it to hurt him. Her sisters tried to calm her down and reassure her that things have changed. They told her to use her empathy power to figure Cal out though she got no results. Coop then discovered that Mika and Cal's relationship was not destined to last which Melanie thought meant that Cal was going to kill her. Melanie then discovered that Cal had a history of abusing women and confronted Elise who, because of threatening messages from Cal, stopped printing the stories in the Bay Mirror. Melanie then rushes to inform Mika, who had already been told of Cal's abusive history by Elise and had confronted him about it which made him angry. Later that night, while doing her webchat with Mika and her sisters in tow, Melanie has a premonition of Elise's funeral, realizing that the close friend that Cal was going to murder was not Mika, but Elise. Melanie then ran to Elise and discovered that she had been brutalized and shot by Cal, and realized, through her anger, that her new power is the ability to manipulate people's emotions, allowing her to overcharge their heads, effectively killing them. Despite wanting to kill Cal in revenge, Melanie heeds Piper's warning and tells a healed Elise her secret in order to get her help in getting Cal locked up. After the situation was resolved, Melanie uses her lesson of trust that she learned during, in her book. First Wedding Anniversary Category:Humans Category:Characters Category:Vampires